Anything For Love

by Melissa Foster

  She reached for his hand, his sadness bleeding out between them. “You were childhood sweethearts. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”

  “I wasn’t the greatest boyfriend. I partied all the time back then, but when I went off to college, I stayed true to her. And I loved her. I didn’t know how not to love her. She was always there, and then”—he looked away, gritting his teeth—“she wasn’t.”

  She wanted to crawl into his lap and hug him, but she was afraid it might be too invasive and make him feel too closed in. “I remember what that was like, wanting to pick up the phone to call my parents, expecting to see them walk through the door. No wonder this is such a difficult time of year for you. Is that why you won’t answer your brothers’ calls? Why you travel all the time? Because the memories are too much?” It made sense to her now.

  “Yes. That’s why I travel so often. And my brothers and I are close, but the reason they’re calling is because the anniversary of her death is the weekend I leave for Los Angeles. They worry about me.”

  “If you miss her this time of year, that’s understandable. They probably want to make sure you know you’re not alone.”

  “I wish it was only that. I miss her, but she’s gone, and I accepted that a long time ago. I’m not pining for her or waiting for someone to measure up to her. We were young, and who knows if we would have lasted, or if I would have driven her away with my partying. That’s not what makes it so hard. It made it hard for a long time, but not anymore. Now it’s everything else. Everyone loved her, not just me. She was a cheerleader in high school, and she always went out of her way to help other people, babysitting, volunteering. It wasn’t just my loss or her family’s loss. The whole community lost her.”

  “Oh, Beau. That’s so sad. She sounds like an easy person to love. But don’t you want to be around people who knew her? When I lost my parents, I needed to be around my grandfather because he knew them as well as I did.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, and when he met her gaze, his face was a mask of grief. “I can’t face seeing everyone. I haven’t seen her brother since the funeral, and I’m not sure I ever want to. He was one of my best friends, and when she died, it killed a piece of him, too.” He inhaled deeply and said, “Duncan Raz was her brother.”

  “That’s why you froze down by the Chickendales.”

  He nodded.

  “Oh my gosh. I wish I had known. I’m so sorry.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for. He’s a good-looking guy. You’re a woman…”

  “Not to make light of the situation, but he’s not as hot as you, if that helps.” That earned a partial smile.

  “It does, but only because I want to be the guy you’re fantasizing about.”

  Happiness floated through her despite their heavy discussion. “Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about there. Big, broody Beau has the starring role in each and every one of my fantasies, whether I’m awake or asleep. It’s torturous.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. “I’m sorry you lost Tory, but if you’ve never talked about losing her, or spent time with the people who knew her best, then maybe doing so would help you find some closure.”

  “It wasn’t just losing her,” he said tightly. “It was how I lost her.” He sat up straighter, fisting his hands, and looked away. The veins in his arms plumped like snakes.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  He turned, the hurt and longing in his eyes inescapable. “I want to. It’s just…Charlotte, whatever you think of me right now is going to change, and I just want to remember this moment for a few seconds longer.”

  She felt guilty and selfish for the level of panic rising inside her. “Why will it change? I can’t imagine that happening for any reason.”

  “I see disappointment and pain in the faces of everyone who knew her back home. I see anguish in your eyes because she died, and you didn’t even know her.”

  “Because it’s sad when anyone dies, Beau. But what you see in my eyes is for you. I can feel how much you hurt, and that makes me sad.”

  He pushed to his feet and paced. “Well, don’t be sad for me,” he said curtly.

  She went to him and reached for his fisted hand. “I know what it feels like to lose the people you love. It will choke the life out of you if you don’t let it out.”

  He stopped pacing and glared at her. She knew she should back off and give him space, but her grandfather hadn’t allowed her to sink into the darkness, and Beau had already been mired in it for too long. She’d thought he’d hidden his feelings from her, but she’d been wrong. They were on his sleeve all along. She’d just been looking for the wrong ones. He could never be free until the noose around his neck was lifted.

  “Whatever you feel guilty about or believe I’ll hold against you can’t be half as bad as you think. You’re not in jail, so you obviously didn’t kill her.”

  His fingers curled into a fist again, but she held tight.

  “Charlotte, you have no idea.”

  She stepped closer, gazing into his tormented eyes, and said, “Then tell me. Unburden yourself to someone who wasn’t there but who cares about you.”

  He looked out into the distance, up at the trees, at the dreamscape, and finally, he looked at her, anguish written in the tension and clouds in his eyes. “It’s my fault she was in that fucking cab, okay?” he seethed. “It was Friday night and I was out partying with Zev. I never heard her texts. She wasn’t supposed to come back until Sunday, but she flew home to surprise me. She texted me three times from the airport, and where was I? Drinking the fucking night away and talking about meaningless bullshit while she climbed into a cab. It was storming out. They hadn’t gotten three miles from the airport before the cab skidded out of control, causing a three-car pileup. They were at the center of it. There was nothing left of the car but twisted metal.”

  Trying to make sense of his guilt, she said, “So she was in an accident in a cab while you were out?”

  “Not just out.” He jerked his hand away and paced. “Out drinking like a selfish kid without a care in the world.”

  “Ten years ago? You were a kid, Beau. That’s what people right out of college do. They go out and party. They have fun and live their lives.”

  He held up his hand. “Don’t do that, okay? Don’t rationalize my inability to grow up. I know what I was back then, and I fucking hate that it took losing her to figure it out. But she died because of me, and everyone in that whole town knows it.”

  “Beau—”

  He shook his head, looking defeated and furious at once. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with you. It wasn’t fair.”

  She went to him, and when he turned away, she moved with him, refusing to be deterred even by his glaring eyes. “So this is why you’re so serious, why you live in the real world?”

  He gave a curt nod. “Fantasies don’t last.”

  “I understand why you feel that way, even if it breaks my heart to know it.”

  “It was a mess, Charlotte. Zev was going out with Tory’s best friend, Carly, and they were so in love. I’m talking making-plans-to-marry-her love.” He swallowed hard and said, “I turned myself around, buckled down and became responsible, even if I can’t stay in Pleasant Hill for long stretches. But Zev? He took off and he’s never looked back. We’re lucky if he visits a few times a year for a couple days.”

  She felt on the verge of tears for the two of them, and for Tory and her best friend. But he trusted her enough to confess this to her, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with giving up on having a happy life because of a mistake he’d made as a young man.

  She hooked her fingers in his belt loop and said, “That’s a lot of guilt to carry around, but I know a thing or two about carrying our fair share of burdens.”

  He looked at her finger curled around his belt loop, and a hint of humor rose in his eyes. “Do you think you can keep me here?”

  “I don’t th
ink anyone can make you stay anywhere you don’t want to be. I just wanted to be closer to you, but I thought you might swat my hand away if I tried to touch you.” She tugged on his belt loop. “This is second best.”

  “Charlotte.”

  The warning in his voice wasn’t strong, and she had a feeling he needed to hear what she had to say. “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told a soul. Not even Aubrey, who’s my best friend in the whole world. When my grandfather died, I blamed myself. He was already brokenhearted when we lost my grandmother, and I was all he had left, and then I went away to college. I knew how lonely he’d be, even though we’d hired a nurse to live there with him. Nothing is the same as family. But he pushed for me to go—he knew how I wanted to write professionally—and he was right to do it. I needed to go to college, to be with people my own age and learn to stand on my own two feet. I needed to date and make mistakes. But after he died I realized how selfish it was of me to do it, regardless of what he wanted. Part of me knew he wouldn’t last without me here.”

  Beau covered her hand with his. “Charlotte, you can’t blame yourself.”

  “In my rational brain, I know that, but part of me will always carry that guilt, like a pebble under my foot that’s always there, but hurts only when I put pressure on it. When I’m missing him or trying to work out a hero’s personality and comparing everything they do to him. Of course, my relationship with my grandfather was nothing like I write, but I try to give my heroes some of his qualities, and I think keeping him alive, in a sense, helps my guilt. He loved us all so much. ‘I love you’ wasn’t just three words he said. We felt his love in everything he did. I want my heroes to be like that. To love hard and forever, to show their emotions—even the awful ones. I want to be like that. The truth is, it was memories of my grandfather that pulled me through my grief over losing him. It didn’t take away my guilt, but remembering our walks and how he gently forced me back into life by making me feel all the emotions that I wanted to hide from—or hide under—helped me put his death into perspective.”

  “I know a thing or two about hiding and running from emotions,” Beau confessed. “It’s easier not to feel.”

  A few days ago it would have taken courage to do what she did next, but now it felt natural to let her heart try to soothe his. She laced their fingers together and gazed up at the man she now understood so much better.

  “I’ve never been in love,” she said softly. “I can’t pretend to know what that feels like. I know I said I understand what it feels like to lose someone you love, and I do. But I also realize it’s different to lose a parent or grandparent than to lose someone who held your love in their hands and took a piece of it with them when they died. Someone whose face you probably see when you close your eyes and whose voice you might conjure when you need grounding.”

  His jaw tightened like a vise, and a lump formed in her throat.

  “But, Beau, those are beautiful things that you should hold on to and experience as often as you want or need to. I think feeling those emotions—missing her, being angry at yourself if you need to—is a start. Only then can you forgive yourself for your mistake and really move on. You weren’t driving the cab. You didn’t cause the storm or the accident. You’re a smart, big-hearted man. A protector. I have seen that even in the few days we’ve spent together. I get that you couldn’t protect her, that you might even feel like you failed her, but you didn’t kill her, just like I didn’t kill my grandfather.”

  He didn’t say a word, and the silence wrapped around them, binding them together, keeping them afloat in a sea of his confession and guilt.

  “You said you never talked about Tory,” she said softly. “But now you are, and that’s a start. Does it help at all? Because I’m a pretty good listener, and I will make the time every day you’re here if you’d like to talk about her.”

  He lowered his forehead to hers and closed his eyes. “I have no idea if it helped.” His eyes opened, brimming with too many emotions to separate. “All I know is that you’re still here even after I told you it was my fault she’s gone, and that’s more than I could have hoped for.”

  “Because it’s not your fault. I don’t know why things happen, but I know that you going out with your brother didn’t cause that cab to crash. And even though I think we were brought together for a reason, I wish with my whole being that you’d never lost her.”

  He slid his hand beneath her hair, holding the back of her neck the way she’d come to crave, his honest eyes pinning her in place. “I haven’t felt anything good since that awful night. Until you, Char. When you’re near me I feel alive, and when we’re close, like we were this morning, I feel more than I ever have. I feel whole, and it’s not fair to share my burden with you, but goddamn it, I want you. I want to be with you, and—”

  She silenced his words with the eager press of her lips. He held her tighter, and she clung to his shoulders, reaching on tiptoes as he kissed her ravenously. His fingers tangled in her hair, guiding her mouth to the angle he craved, pouring his emotions into the kiss. She felt his anger, his confusion, his passion, and they both went a little wild, trying to fill a void within them. She wanted to heal his sadness, and in doing so, find the rest of the man who was making her want so much more than she ever had.

  She tugged at his shirt. “Off,” she pleaded.

  He reached behind him with one hand and tore it over his head. His mouth came down over hers urgently, sending her thoughts reeling as he crushed her to him. His chest pressed against her breasts, and his arousal ground against her belly as they made out with reckless abandon. They pawed and clawed at each other’s bodies. He tugged her head back and sealed his teeth over her neck. Rivers of pleasure rushed through her.

  “Charlotte,” he panted out between mind-numbing assaults. “Need me to slow down?”

  Their closeness was like a drug, and she wanted to overdose. Her heart took a perilous leap as she reached between them and tugged open the button on his pants.

  “Fuck,” he growled.

  “Yes, please,” she begged.

  His eyes locked on hers, so wicked and wanting, she felt his desire slithering beneath her skin, winding around her like a python. He lowered his mouth to her shoulder, placing a series of tender kisses across it, slowing to suck and bite every few seconds, revving her up to spine-tingling proportions. Every graze of his teeth made her insides reach for him, and when his hand moved over the bow at her back that held her dress together, her body vibrated with anticipation. His rough hands coasted hot and greedy over her skin, like he was savoring the feel of her, pressing her tighter against him. But she needed more and pushed back. She lowered her mouth to his chest, curling her hands around his biceps. He smelled of musk and man, tasted of salty desire. She flicked her tongue over his nipple, feeling it pebble as a groan fell from his lips. He grabbed her head, holding her mouth where he wanted it. She was happy to comply, sucking and using her teeth on the sensitive nub, earning hungry moans and hard thrusts of his hips.

  She wanted to feel his powerful body over hers, to be marked by him from the inside out. When his hand met the bow on her back again, he stilled, and she gazed up at him. His eyes blazed into her, seeking approval.

  “If you don’t pull it, I will,” she panted out.

  “Good God, Charlotte—”

  His mouth came devouringly down over hers, and he pulled the bow free. The rope loosened around her middle and slid off her shoulders as she succumbed to the forceful domination of his lips. Her dress slid down her body and puddled at her feet. Their bare chests collided, and his arms circled her. His hands flattened against her back, holding them so close nothing could come between them.

  He tore his mouth away, still holding her captive, a world of emotions colliding in his eyes. She knew this was as different for him as it was new for her, and somehow she understood that he wanted her to know that, even if he couldn’t say it.

  “I know,” she whispered, and t
he relief on his face made her belly flip.

  He tugged off his boots and stripped bare. She’d touched him, tasted him, felt every inch of his hard body only hours earlier in the shower, and still she was shocked anew by his sheer beauty. He stepped closer and took her chin between his finger and thumb, pressing a kiss to her lips. Gone was the fury and confusion that had plagued him since the day they met, and she knew he truly saw her and wanted only her.

  “Hi, beautiful.” A genuine smile lifted his lips.

  Her heart stumbled as he knelt before her and carefully slipped her panties down her legs, then kissed his way up her body. He took his time, his big hands running up her legs, his lips sending goose bumps chasing up her spine.

  “I want to be so close to you,” he whispered between tender kisses, “you feel me wrapped around you in your dreams.”

  She had no idea how her wobbly legs carried her as he took her hand and led her to the blanket, but she was glad they did. As they lay down, she said, “It’s been years.”

  “I know,” he said, offering the same relief she’d given him.

  She’d forgotten she’d already told him that. He gathered her in his arms, both of them lying on their sides, and he guided her leg over his hip, cupping her bottom. And then he kissed her. It wasn’t the urgent kiss of fearful lovers worried they’d run out of time, or the easy kiss of familiarity. It wasn’t a single kiss at all. These were smoldering kisses that seared through her veins, rousing passions she’d never known existed. He took her more forcefully, holding her tighter, breathing air into her, surpassing all the kisses she’d ever read or written. Her emotions soared, throbbing through her core, down her limbs, claiming every inch of her soul. Her nipples burned, her sex swelled, and just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, he swept her beneath him, kissing her even more passionately. She disappeared into the velvety warmth of his mouth, the strong cocoon of his body, into a world like nothing she’d ever imagined. A safe, mystical universe of their own, where everything felt new and explosive.